Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The house of Alphonse Daudet, located in the hamlet of Champrosay in Draveil (Essonne), is a villa built in the early 1830s under the reign of Louis-Philippe. Originally, it belongs to Claude Pouillet, physicist and son-in-law of the architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart, who receives personalities like Eugene Delacroix. The latter dine there in 1855 with General Charles Parchappe and Frédéric Villot, curator at the Louvre, and painted Les Chevaux leaving the sea. The property then changes hands before being acquired by the Daudet.

In 1887, Alphonse and Julia Daudet bought the house at auction after their father's death. For a decade, until 1897, Daudet wrote part of his work there and welcomed a circle of prestigious artists and writers: Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, Renoir, Tourgueniev, Manet, and Edmond de Goncourt, who died there in 1896. Marcel Proust, close to their son Lucien, evokes this period in a letter as an inspiration for Swann's side. The house, a place of creation and intellectual exchange, is sold after the death of Alphonse Daudet.

From 1897 to the present day, property knew several vocations. Repurchased in 1946 by a religious community, she became the priory of Saint John, hosting the magazine PRESENCES until the 1960s, with contributions from Mauriac or Gabriel Marcel. Transformed into a nursing home of the psychiatric institution It is now a private residence open for cultural events, perpetuating its link with art and literature.

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